


Not A Victory March

by koldtblod



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Hurt, Proper terrible at titles so sorry about that, Reflection, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2015-10-27
Packaged: 2018-04-28 07:16:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5082709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/koldtblod/pseuds/koldtblod
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As they're walking away from the burning shack, Beth thinks about everything that's happened and what it means.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not A Victory March

**Author's Note:**

> I decided to rewatch _Still_ and launch myself back into a bit of writing to starve off the boredom of waiting for wifi to be installed. Here we go, I guess. First post, but not first fic. The title is taken from the song [_Hallelujah_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8AWFf7EAc4), by whichever artist you prefer! My personal favourite is Jeff Buckley's, as linked.

   He’d been so violent and hostile and Beth would be lying if she said that she hadn’t been scared, not even for a moment. He’d been angry and seething and Beth had shouted right back as he’d shouted at her, and she was pretty sure that the moonshine they’d been drinking was only half to blame. They’d not been drunk but surely well on their way and he, Beth realised, had been just as upset as she was at loosing the rest of the group. Daryl Dixon wasn’t scared of anything, or so he’d said, but Beth was sure that he hurt just as much as, or maybe more than, everyone else.

   She didn’t for a minute, either, believe that he was quite so fearless.

   After that she did a lot of thinking. She washed down her anger with a little more moonshine and sat pouring her heart out to Daryl on the porch, gently this time and letting him open up too. They set the cabin on fire and it burned as fiercely as the alcohol in the back of Beth's throat and only later, as they went away through the darkness - quiet and sobering - did Beth wish perhaps that they had waited until morning to set the place ablaze.

   Exhaustion, eventually, convinced them to settle down somewhere. There was no makeshift camp this time, not even anything to make a camp from, but Daryl pressed them both onwards until they found a small space between the thick trees, just sufficient enough to keep an eye out and with enough foliage to conceal themselves. Daryl propped himself up against a tree trunk, and Beth curled tightly into a crevice between his legs and twisted root.

   Sophia, that little girl who had wandered as a walker out of their barn – Daryl had blamed himself for her death. _That’s on me_ , he’d said, and it stung like nettles to hear because Beth just kept thinking about it. _That’s on me._ If Daryl could blame himself for that, then maybe she had to blame herself for a lot of things too, for a lot of people - her father, for example, not least. But it didn’t make sense to think like that; not in this world; not now, especially when they had already lost so much.

   Thinking about Hershel Greene again made her feel sick with sadness. Thinking about Maggie made her feel sick with sadness. Everything did, and it hurt, almost physically like a loose thread that had been pulled and came jauntily apart, opening at the seams. Thinking about all of it, everything that had happened since the world ended, slowly tugged at this thread and left something previously sewn together so tightly now with a gaping hole at its centre, and the centre was Beth. She didn’t cry, she’d said – much in the way that Daryl wasn’t scared of anything – but God, she felt. Beth always felt.

   Daryl’s hand touched her arm very gently.

   “I’m okay,” she told him, but her voice was different somehow and didn’t really sound like her, and Daryl made that gruff, disbelieving sound at the back of his throat.

   “Ya got moonshine blues,” he said. “Alcohol blues. Ol’ ladies get ‘em with gin.”

   Beth laughed quietly. “I ain’t no ol’ lady.”

   “I know that.”

   She wanted to apologise to him, for a lot of things really, including those that weren’t her fault and would never be her fault and had happened a long, long time before she knew Daryl at all. Twisting her head, she looked up at him as he sat beside her, his hand still resting for a moment on her arm before sliding away, back to his lap, and Beth knew that the last thing he would want from her was an apology.

   In a way, Beth also knew that she had a strange understanding of this man; this man who had grown up so fast and hard and with a Daddy who shot guns inside the house, in a place so different and alien in emotions to hers, and maybe, when the world changed, had been fighting enough monsters already to fall quickly into place. Daryl would see her sadness perhaps, if she apologised, and take it instead as pity.

   She didn’t want that. Beth didn’t know what she wanted anymore, but it sure as hell wasn’t that. She was weak and stupid and naïve to him because she’d had everything that he never had, and he didn’t understand, and it scared him. She’d seen it first-hand at the golf club, even if she’d tried to ignore him; Daryl had gathered up that money like he’d never seen so much of it in his life, even though it didn’t matter, and stuck darts into the rich, suited strangers on the walls who’d probably never seen any less.

   Maybe the end of the world had come around, and Daryl had hurt less than the rest of them. Maybe he’d had far less to lose. But maybe – and Beth saw it in him when he’d cried for Sophia – despite everything, he was learning to feel for people so vividly now that he hurt all the much more. Beth wanted to apologise for that.

   “Quit starin’ at me, girl,” Daryl said then, quiet amongst the rustling of the trees.

   “I was thinkin’,” she said, but looked away anyway. A moment of silence passed between them again before, in a slight voice that suited as an apology even if it wasn’t, she whispered, “I want you to teach me how to shoot a crossbow.” When Beth craned her neck, Daryl wasn’t looking back this time.

   She hadn’t thought about how he’d grabbed her before, twisting the skin on her wrist as he’d dragged her outside, half-choking her as he forced his crossbow under her chin. She’d forgotten the fear, the unpleasantness of his voice, and instead only stored it, subconsciously, with all the other things that she knew about him, about his life. She hadn’t thought about it before now, but he had.

   “Daryl?”

   “No ya don’t,” he said finally. “I’m not a good teacher, think I proved that to ya.”

   “I’m not scared, you know?” And then quietly, “Not of you.”

   “Go to sleep, Beth,” he said.

   Beth sighed and turned over again, back onto her side with her cheek pressed against the dirt of the roots and floor. He was ashamed now, she knew that. But gently, after a moment, Daryl’s hand came up to her arm again, not to warrant a response from her but just to touch her there, very slightly with the back of his fingers. And Beth closed her eyes. He’d teach her how, in the morning, and she’d stand tall right up beside him. She’d survive.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, reviewing, and etc!  
> 


End file.
